A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.

About 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41%, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year. Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

Useless Degrees

The USA Today talks about the "underemployed". Is that really what's going on?

Just what job does someone majoring in Political Science, English, History, Social Studies, Creative Writing, Art, etc., etc., etc., expect to get?

Arguably, graduates in those majors (and many more) should be thankful to get any job. Therefore, those who do land a job should therefore be considered fully employed, not underemployed.

In turn, this means a college education now has a negative payback for most degrees.

Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he has received financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. "There is not much out there, it seems," he said.

There is nothing out there for many degrees which means that going to graduate school will do nothing but waste more money. Nurses are still in demand, but technology and engineering majors are crapshoots. If you can land a technology or engineering job it is likely to be high paying, but if not, the next step is retail sales.

Who Benefits From Student Aid?

Students get no benefit from "student aid". Rather, teachers, administrators, and corrupt for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix do.

Obama wants to throw more money at education, and that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead, I propose stopping student aid programs and accrediting more online schools to lower the cost of education so that degrees do not have negative payback. Sadly, there is a trillion dollar student loan bubble, and that debt overhang will negatively impact the economy for years to come. Let's not make the problem worse. It's time to kill the inappropriately named "student aid" program.

If the purpose of an education is to make you employable, then you should go to a trade school.

If the purpose of an education is to be educated, then get your degree in Poli Sci, and then go to work where ever you can find work and work your way up. If you’re smart and you work hard, you’ll be running the place eventually.

A Poli Sci degree is probably a great degree to have if you’re planning to enlist in the military. And a few years of military experience under your belt, along with your degree in Whatever, is probably good preparation for lots of stuff.

The problem isn’t the degree in Creative Writing. The problem is the idea that it guarantees you a job, and ought to guarantee you a job. Get your degree in Creative Writing, go to work selling shoes, and write. Get your degree in Art, go to work at the supermarket, and paint in your studio in the garage. If you’re good, someone will buy your screenplay, or your sculpture, and if they don’t, still, you did what you loved.

Those are fascinating stats. Those who can be assumed to BE in college 18 to 24 year olds) are 50% LESS supportive of Obama than those recently out of college (25 to 29 year olds). I would have thought the opposite to be more true, since life sucks for recent grads.

This is what happens when we let Democrats educate our kids. Its a wonder, after 12 or 16 years of miseducation, if any of them vote conservative at all.

Who was it that said:

If you're 18 and not liberal, you haven't got a heart; if you're 40 and not conservative, you haven't got a brain.

Part of capturing the youth vote is tapping into their idealism. Many of them want to "change the world," and probably many of them are completely onboard with "fundamentally changing the Unite States," without really knowing what it is they want to change.

I give them a partial pass--one, because they have not seen enough of the world to know how it works; two, our education system and popular culture does not show both sides--it shows conservatism as evil, cruel, and un-hip; and three, I was a little like that in my youth.

28
posted on 04/25/2012 10:59:59 AM PDT
by Lou L
(The Senate without a filibuster is just a 100-member version of the House.)

Interesting map. This is what happens when we let Democrats educate our kids. Its a wonder, after 12 or 16 years of miseducation, if any of them vote conservative at all.

I'm laughing at folks pointing the finger at the Millennials like myself (I'm 27) when the worst generation in this country's history was the Baby Boomer generation. Why not focus the ire on the folks who RAISED US? The burned-out hippies who had it so good (because of their Builder parents) that they became spoiled brats.

In my opinion, it's a miracle the Millenium generation turned out as well as it did. Free access to information has helped...

the worst generation in this country's history was the Baby Boomer generation.

That would be my generation and I agree with you. (With some obvious exceptions like yours truly).

Mainstreaming drugs wrecked this generation like a nuclear bomb.

As you say, with that considered its amazing subsequent generations have come out as well as they did.

I still maintain my original point, which I have made on other occasions in more detail. You can't win the war of ideas when you abdicate the logistics of that war, when you abdicate the very field where the battle takes place. That would be (1) schools and universities, (2) news media, (3) entertainment media. All of these are mostly in the hands of our ideological opposites.

Conservatives are the true independent thinkers of whatever generation. They (we) are the real counterculture. But we do need to understand the cost of abdicating the field of battle and work to establish our own media, and take control of the education of our kids. What you may have understood as an "agist" slam was just me beating my favorite drum; to win the war of ideas we have to engage on those three levels. Schools, news media, entertainment media. Build our own if the originals are too far gone.

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